by a train of emigrants eager to restore the old ing Castlereagh-Pantisocratists--ultra-Tories his course through those times. Exposed suc What his political opinions were in his lat --Heretics--Persecutors--breaking the old ter years is written in the annals of his country. laws against sedition--calling for new and Those annals will sufficiently refute the calumsharper laws against sedition--writing demo-ny which his biographer has ventured to pub eratic dramas--writing laureate odes--pane-lish in the very advertisement to his work. gyrizing Marten-panegyrizing Laud-consist- "Sir James Mackintosh," says he, "was avow. ent in nothing but in an intolerance which in edly and emphatically a Whig of the Revo any person would be offensive, but which is lution: and since the agitation of religious altogether unpardonable in men who, by their liberty and parliamentary reform became a naown confession, have had such ample experi- tional movement, the great transaction of 1688 has been more dispassionately, more correctly, ence of their own fallibility. We readily concede to some of these persons the praise of elo- and less highly estimated."-While we tranquence and of poetical invention, nor are we scribe the words, our anger cools down into If they mean any thing, they must by any means disposed, even where they have scorn. been gainers by their conversion, to question mean that the opinions of Sir James Mackintheir sincerity. It would be most uncandid to tosh concerning religious liberty and parlia attribute to sordid motives actions which ad- mentary reform went no further than those of mit of a less discreditable explanation. We the authors of the Revolution,-in other words, think that the conduct of these persons has that Sir James Mackintosh opposed Catholic been precisely what was to be expected from Emancipation, and quite approved of the old men who were gifted with strong imagination constitution of the House of Commons. The and quick sensibility, but who were neither allegation is confuted by twenty volumes of accurate observers nor logical reasoners. It parliamentary debates, nay, by innumerable was natural that such men should see in the passages in the very fragment which this wrivictory of the third estate in France the dawn ter has done his little utmost to deface. of a new Saturnian age. It was natural that tell him that Sir James Mackintosh has often the disappointment should be proportioned to done more for religious liberty and for parlia the extravagance of their hopes. Though the mentary reform in a quarter of an hour than direction of their passions was altered, the vio- the feeble abilities of his biographer will ever The effect in the whole course of a long life. lence of those passions was the same. force of the rebouna was proportioned to the force of the original impulse. The pendulum had been wung furiously to the left because drawn too far to the right. We own that nothing gives us so high an idea of the judgment and temper of Sir James Mackintosh as the manner in which he shaped We The Continuation which follows Sir James Mackintosh's Fragment is as offensive as the Memoir which precedes it. We do not pretend to have read the whole, or even one half of it. Three hundred quarto pages of such matter are too much for human patience. It would be unjust to the writer nct to present our readers few of whom, we suspect, will be his readers, with a sample of his eloquence. We will treat them with a short sentence, and will engage that they shall think it long enough. Idolatry! fatal word, which has edged more swords, lighted more fires, and inhumanized more hearts, than the whole vocabulary of the passions besides." A choice style for history, we must own! This gentleman is fond of the word "vocabulary." He speaks very scornfully of Churchill's "vocabulary," and blames Burnet for the "hardihood of his vocabulary." What this last expression may mean, we do not very clearly understand. But we are quite sure that Burnet's vocabulary, with all its hardi hood, would never have dared to admit such a word as "inhumanized." Of the accuracy of the Continuation as to matters of fact we will give a single specimen. With a little time we could find twenty such. "Bishop Lloyd did not live to reap, at least to enjoy, the fruit of his public labours and secret intrigues. He died soon after the Revolution, upon his translation from St. Asaph to Worcester." Nobody tolerably well acquainted with political, ecclesiastical, or literary history, can need to be told that Lloyd was not made Bishop of Worcester till the year 1699, after the death of Stillingfleet; that he outlived the Revolution nearly thirty years; and died in the reign of George I. This blunder is the more inexcusable, as one of the most curious and best known transactions in the time of Anne, was the address of the House of Commons to the queen, begging her to dismiss Lloyd from his place of almoner. As we turn over the leaves, another sentence catches our eye. We extract it as an instance both of historical accuracy and philosophical profundity. "Religion in 1688 was not a rational conviction, or a sentiment of benevolence and charity; but one of the malignant passions, and a cause of quarrel. Even in the next age, Congreve makes a lying sharper, in one of his plays, talk seriously of fighting for his religion." What is meant by "even in the next age?" Congreve's first work, the novel of "Cleophil," was written in the very year 1688; and the "Old Bachelor," from which the quotation is taken, was brought on the stage only five years after the Revolution. But this great logician ought to go further. Sharper talks of fighting, not only for his religion, but for his friends. We presume, therefore, that in the year 1688, friendship was "one of the malignant passions, and a cause of quarrel." But enough and too much of such folly. this omninescience, if we may carry the "hardihood of our vocabulary" so far as to coin a new word for what is to us quite a new thing. We take the first page on which we open as a fair sample, and no more than a fair sample, of the whole. ་ "Lord Halifax played his part with deeper perfidy. This opinion is expressed without reference to the strange statement of Bishop Burnet, which seems, indeed, too inconsistent to be ment of the reader. "The Marquis of Halifax,' true. It should be cited, however, for the judg says he, (on the arrival of the commissioners at Hungerford,) sent for me; but the prince said, though he would suspect nothing from our meeting, others might; so I did not speak Yet he took occasion to ask me, so as nobody with him in private, but in the hearing of others. observed it, if we had a mind to have the king in our hands. I said by no means, for we would had a mind to go away? I said nothing was not hurt his person. He asked next, what if he so much to be wished for. This I told the prince, and he approved of both my answers.' "Is it credible that Lord Halifax started an overture of the blackest guilt and infamy in a room with others, in a mere conversation with an inferior personage, who had little credit and no discretion, and whilst he had, it has been shown, more suitable vehicles of communication with the Prince of Orange! Such a step outrages all probability when imputed to a statesman noted for his finesse. But why should Burnet invent and dramatize such a scene? It may be accounted for by his dis tinctive character. his history a subaltern partisan, conscious of He appears throughout his inferiority, and struggling to convince others and himself, that he was a personage of the first pretension. Such a man, whose vanihaving heard of the intrigue of Lord Halifax, ty, moreover, was notoriously unscrupulous, would seize and mould it to his purpose as a proof of his importance, and as an episode in his history." And this is the man who has been chosen to complete a work which Sir James Mackintosh left unfinished! Every line of the passage proves the writer to be ignorant of the most notorious facts, and unable to read characters of which the peculiarities lie most open to superficial observation. Burnet was partial, vain, credulous, and careless. But Burnet was quite incapable of framing a deliberate and circumstantial falsehood. And what reason does this writer assign for giving the lie direct to the Never was there such a contrast as that good bishop? Absolutely none, except that which Sir James's Fragment presents to this Lord Halifax would not have talked on a deliContinuation. In the former, we have scarcely cate subject to so "inferior a personage." been able, during several close examinations, Was Burnet then considered as an insignifito detect one mistake as to matter of fact. We cant man? Was it to an insignificant ma never open the latter without lighting on a ri- that Parliament voted thanks for services rendiculous blunder which it does not require the dered to the Protestant religion? Was it assistance of any book of reference to detect. against an insignificant man that Dryden put The author has not the smallest notion of the forth all his powers of invective in the most state of England in 1688; of the feelings and elaborate, though not the most vigorous of his opinions of the people; of the relative position works? Was he an insignificant man whoin of parties; of the character of one single pub- the great Bossuet constantly described, as the lic man on either side. No single passage can most formidable of all the champions of the ive any idea of this equally liffused ignorance, | Reformation? Was it to an insignificant mas the old times, as to deny that medicine, surge ry, botany, chemistry, engineering, navigation, are better understood now than in any former age. We conceive that it is the same with political science. Like those other sciences which we have mentioned, it has always been working itself clearer and clearer, and depositing impurity after impurity. There was a time when the most powerful of human intellects were deluded by the gibberish of the astrologer and the alchymist; and just so there was a time when the most enlightened and virtuous statesmen thought it the first duty of a government to persecute heretics, to found monasteries, to make war on Saracens. But time advances, facts accumulate, doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences. descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority—of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on, till schoolboys laugh at the jargon which imposed on Bacon,-till country rectors condemn the illiberality and intolerance of Sir Thomas More. that King William gave the very first bishopric that became vacant after the Revolution? Tillotson, Tennyson, Stillingfleet, Hough, Patrick, all distinguished by their exertions in defence of the reformed faith, all supporters of the new government, were they all passed by in favour of a man of no weight-of a man so unimportant that no person of rank would talk with him about momentous affairs? And, even granting that Burnet was a very "inferior personage,' did Halifax think him so? Everybody knows the contrary-that is, everybody except this writer. In 1680 it was reported that Halifax was a concealed Papist. It was accordingly moved in the House of Commons by Halifax's stepfather, Chichley, that Dr. Burnet should be examined as to his lordship's religious opinions. This proves that they were on terms of the closest intimacy. But this is not all. There is still extant among the writings of Halifax a character of Burnet, drawn with the greatest skill and delicacy. It is no unmixed panegyric. The failings of Burnet are pointed out; but he is described as a man whose very failings arose from the constant activity of his intellect. "His friends," says the Marquis, "love him too well to see small faults, or if they do, think that his greater talents give him a privilege of straying from the strict rules of caution." Men like Halifax do not write elaborate characters, either favourable or unfavourable, of those whom they consider as "inferior personages." Yet Burnet, it seems, was so inferior a personage, that Halifax would not trust him with a secret! And what, after all, was the mighty secret? This writer calls Seeing these things-seeing that, by the conit "an overture of guilt and infamy." It was fession of the most obstinate enemies of innono overture of guilt and infamy. It was no vation, our race has hitherto been almost overture at all. It was, on the face of it, a very constantly advancing in knowledge, and not simple question, which the most devoted adhe-seeing any reason to believe that, precisely at rent of King James might naturally and pro- the point of time at which we came into the perly have asked. world, a change took place in the faculties of the human mind, or in the mode of discovering truth, we are reformers: we are on the side of progress. From the great advances which European society has made, during the last four centuries, in every species of knowledge, we infer, not that there is no more room for improvement, but that in every science which deserves the name, immense improvements may be confidently expected. This, we repeat, is only a fair sample. We have not observed one paragraph in the vast mass, which, if examined in the same manner, would not yield an equally abundant harvest of error and impotence. What most disgusts us is the contempt with which the writer thinks fit to speak of all things that were done before the coming in of the very last fashions in politics. What he thinks about this, or about any other matter, is But the very considerations which lead us of little consequence, and would be of no con- to look forward with sanguine hope to the fusequence at all, if he had not deformed an ex-ture, prevent us from looking back with concellent work, by fastening to it his own speculations. But we think that we have sometimes observed a leaning towards the same fault in persons of a very different order of intellect from this writer. We will therefore take this opportunity of making a few remarks on an error which is, we fear, becoming common; and which appears to us not only absurd, but as pernicious as any error concerning the transactions of a past age can possibly bel tempt on the past. We do not flatter ourselves with the notion, that we have attained perfection, and that no more truth remains to be found. We believe that we are wiser than our ancestors. We believe, also, that our posterity will be wiser than we. It would be gross injustice in our grandchildren to talk of us with contempt, merely because they may have surpassed us—to call Watt a fool, because mechanical powers may be discovered which may supersede the use of steam-to deride the efforts which have been made in our time to improve the discipline of prisons, and to enlighten the minds of the poor, because future philanthropists may devise better places of confinement than Mr. Bentham's Panopticon, and better places of education than Mr. Lan caster's Schools. As we would have our descendants judge us, so ought we to judge our fathers. In order to form a correct estimate of their merits, we ought to place ourselves in their situation-to put out of our minds, for a time, all that knowledge which they, however eager in the pursuit of truth, could not have, and which we, however negligent we may have been, could not help having. It was not merely difficult, but absolutely impossible, for the best and greatest of men, two hundred years ago, to be what a very commonplace person in our days may easily be, and, indeed, must necessarily be. But it is too much that the benefactors of mankind, after having been reviled by the dunces of their own generation for going too far, are to be reviled by the dunces of the next generation for not going far enough. The truth lies between two absurd extremes. On one side is the bigot who pleads the wisdom of our ancestors as a reason for not doing what they, in our place, would be the first to do, who opposes the Reform Bill because Lord Somers did not see the necessity of parliamentary reform,-who would have opposed the Revolution because Ridley and Cranmer professed boundless submission to the royal prerogative, and who would have opposed the Reformation because the Fitzwalters and Marischals, whose seals are set to the Great Charter, were devoted adherents to the Church of Rome. On the other side is the conceited sciolist who speaks with scorn of the Great Charter, because it did not reform the church; of the Reformation, because it did not limit the prerogative; and of the Revolution, because it did not purify the House of Commons. The former of these errors we have often combated, and shall always be ready to combat; the latter, though rapidly spreading, has not, we think, yet come under our notice. The former error bears directly on practical questions, and obstructs useful reforms. It may, therefore, seem to be, and probably is, the more mischievous of the two. But the latter is equally absurd; it is at least equally symptomatic of a shallow understanding and an namiable temper; and, if it should ever become general, it will, we are satisfied, produce very prejudicial effects. Its tendency is to deprive the benefactors of mankind of their honest fame, and to put the best and the worst men of past times on the same level. The author of a great reformation is almost always unpopular in his own age. He generally passes his life in disquiet and danger. It is therefore for the interest of the human race that the memory of such men should be had in reverence, and that they should be supported against the scorn and hatred of their contemporaries, by the hope of leaving a great and imperishable name. To go on the forlorn hope of truth is a service of peril: who will undertake it, if it be not also a service of honour? It is easy enough, after the ramparts are carried, to find men to plant the flag on the highest tower. The difficulty is to find men who are ready to go first into the breach, and it would be bad policy indeed to insult their VOL. III.-38 remains because they fell in the breach, and did not live to penetrate to the citadel. Now here we have a book written by a man who is a very bad specimen of the English of the nineteenth century, a man who knows nothing but what it is a scandal not to know. And if we were to judge by the self-complacent pity with which he speaks of the great statesmen and philosophers of a former age, we should guess that he was the author of the most original and important inventions in political science. Yet not so:-for men who are able to make discoveries are generally disposed to make allowances. Men who are eagerly pressing forward in pursuit of truth are grateful to every one who has cleared an inch of the way for them. It is, for the most part, the man below mediocrity, the man who has just capacity enough to pick up and repeat the commonplaces which are fashionable in his own time,-it is he, we say, who looks with disdain on the very intellects to which it is owing that these commonplaces are not still considered as startling paradoxes or damnable heresies. The writer is just the man who, if he had lived in the seventeenth century, would have devoutly believed that the Papists burned London,-who would have swallowed the whole of Oates's story about the forty thousand soldiers disguised as pilgrims, who were to meet in Gallicia, and sail thence to invade England,-who would have carried a Protestant flail under his coat,-and who would have been furious if the story of the warmingpan had been questioned. It is quite natural that such a man should speak with contempt of the great reformers of that time, because they did not know some things which he never would have known, but for the salutary effects of their exertions. The men to whom we owe it that we have the House of Commons are sneered at because they did not suffer the debates of the House to be published. authors of the Toleration Act are treated as bigots, because they did not go the whole length of Catholic emancipation. Just so we have heard a baby, mounted on the shoulders of its father, cry out, "How much taller I am than papa!" The This gentleman can never want matter for pride, if he finds it so easily. He may boast of an indisputable superiority to all the greatest men of all past ages. He can read and write. Homer did not know a letter. He has been taught that the earth goes round the sun. Archimedes held that the sun went round the earth. He is aware that there is a place called New Holland. Columbus and Gama went to their graves in ignorance of the fact. He has heard of the Georgium Sidus. Newton was ignorant of the existence of such a planet. He is acquainted with the use of gunpowder. Hannibal and Cæsar won their victories with sword and spear. We submit, however, that is not the way in which men are to be esti mated. We submit that a wooden spoon of our day would not be justified in calling Gaii leo and Napier blockheads, because they never heard of the differenti al calculus. We submit that Caxton's press in Westminster Abbev, rude as it is, ought to be looked at with quite as much respect as the best constructed machinery that ever, in our time, impressed the clearest type on the finest paper. Sydenham first discovered that the cool regimen succeeded best in cases of small-pox. By this discovery he saved the lives of hundreds of thousands; and we venerate his memory for it, though he never heard of inoculation. Lady Mary Montague brought inoculation into use; and we respect her for it, though she never heard of vaccination. Jenner introduced vaccination; we adinire him for it, and we shall continue to admire him for it, although some still safer and more agreeable preservative should be discovered. It is thus that we ought to judge of the events and the men of other times. They were behind us. It could not be otherwise. But the question with respect to them is not where they were, but which way they were going. Were their faces set in the right or wrong direction? Were they in the front or in the rear of their generation? Did they exert themselves to help onward the great movement of the human race, or to stop it? This is not charity, but simple justice and common sense. It is the fundamental law of the world in which we live that truth shall grow, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. A person who complains of the men of 1688 for not having been men of 1835, might just as well complain of projectiles for describing a parabola, or of quicksilver for being heavier than water. ances for the state of political science and political morality in former ages. In the work before us, Sir James Mackintosh speaks with just respect of the Whigs of the Revolution, while he never fails to condemn the conduct of that party towards the members of the Church of Rome. His doctrines are the libe ral and benevolent doctrines of the nineteenth century. But he never forgets that the men whom he is describing were men of the seventeenth century. From Mr. Mill this indulgence, or to speak more properly, this justice, was less to be expected. That gentleman, in some of his works, appears to consider politics, not as an experi mental, and therefore a progressive science, but as a science of which all the difficulties may be resolved by short synthetical arguments drawn from truths of the most vulgar notoriety. Were this opinion well founded, the people of one generation would have little or no advantage over those of another generation. But though Mr. Mill, in some of his essays, has been thus misled, as we conceive, by a fondness for neat and precise forms of demonstration, it would be gross injustice not to admit that, in his History, he has employed the inductive method of investigation with eminent ability and success. We know of no writer who takes so much pleasure in the truly useful, noble, and philosophical employment of tracing the progress of sound opinions from their embryo state to their full maturity. He eagerly culls from old despatches and minutes every expression in which he can discern the imperfect germ of any great truth which has since been fully developed. He never fails to bestow praise on those who, though far from coming up to his standard of perfection, yet rose in a small degree above the common level of their contemporaries. It is thus that the annals of past times ought to be written. It is thus, especially, that the annals of our own country ought to be written Undoubtedly we ought to look at ancient transactions by the light of modern knowledge. Undoubtedly it is among the first duties of an historian to point out the faults of the eminent men of former generations. There are no errors which are so likely to be drawn into precedent, and therefore none which it is so necessary to expose, as the errors of persons who have a just title to the gratitude and admiration of posterity. In politics as in religion, there are devotees who show their reve- The history of England is emphatically the rence for a departed saint by converting his history of progress. It is the history of a con tomb into a sanctuary for crime. Receptacles stant movement of the public mind which pro of wickedness are suffered to remain undis-duced a constant change in the institutions of a turbed in the neighbourhood of the church, which glories in the relics of some martyred apostle. Because he was merciful, his bones give security to assassins. Because he was chaste, the precinct of his temple is filled with Licensed stews. Privileges of an equally absurd kind nave oeen set up against the jurisdiction of political philosophy. Vile abuses cluster thick round every glorious event, round every venerable name; and this evil assuredly calls for vigorous measures of literary police. But the proper course is to abate the nuisance without defacing the shrine,-to drive out the gangs of thieves and prostitutes without doing foul and cowardly wrongs to the great society. We see that society, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in a state more miserable than the state in which the most de graded nations of the east now are. We see it subjected to the tyranny of a handful of armed foreigners. We see a strong distinction of caste separating the victorious Norman from the vanquished Saxon. We see the great body of the population in a state of personal slavery. We see the most debasing and cruel supersti tion exercising boundless dominion over the most elevated and benevolent minds. We see the multitude sunk in brutal ignorance, and the studious few engaged in acquiring what did not deserve the name of knowledge. In the course of seven centuries this wretched and In this respect, two historians of our time degraded race have become the greatest and may be proposed as models, Sir James Mack- most highly civilized people that ever the world Intosh and Mr. Mill. Differing in most things, saw,-have spread their dominion over every in this they closely resemble each other. Sir quarter of the globe,-have scattered the seeds James is lenient-Mr. Mill is severe. But of mighty empires and republics over wast neither of them ever omits, in the apportioning continents of which no dim intimation had of praise and censure, to make ample allow-ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo,-have created ashes of the illustrious dead. |